8.  The applicant was born in 1934 and lives in Airvault.
9.  The applicant inherited two plots of land in the municipality of Louin (département of Deux-Sèvres) with a total surface area of approximately ten hectares, which are included in the hunting grounds of the Louin approved municipal hunters’ association (association communale de chasse agréée – “ACCA”). He holds a hunting permit.
10.  In France, hunting rights over land belong in principle to the landowner. However, Law no. 64-696 of 10 July 1964, known as the “Loi Verdeille”, provides for the pooling of hunting grounds within ACCAs. The creation of an ACCA in each municipality is compulsory in twenty-nine of the ninety‑three départements of metropolitan France excluding Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle, including in Deux‑Sèvres; in the remainder of those ninety-three départements it is optional. Landowners whose property forms part of the hunting grounds of an ACCA in this way automatically become members of the association. They lose their exclusive hunting rights over their own land but have the right to hunt throughout the area covered by the ACCA.
However, the owners of land with a surface area above a certain threshold may object to the inclusion of their land in the ACCA’s hunting grounds or request its removal from them (in the département of Deux‑Sèvres, the threshold is twenty hectares, which corresponds to the statutory minimum area). Since the entry into force of Law no. 2000-698 of 26 July 2000, landowners “who, being opposed to hunting as a matter of personal conviction, prohibit hunting, including by themselves, on their property” also have this option, irrespective of the surface area of their land (see paragraphs 18-23 below).
11.  In a letter of 12 August 2002 the applicant informed the Prefect of Deux-Sèvres that he wished to “object to the practice of hunting by the Louin ACCA on [his] plots of land” “as a matter of personal conviction”. On 23 September 2002 the Prefect informed him of the procedure to follow in order to have his land removed from the ACCA’s hunting grounds on account of his opposition to hunting for reasons of conscience.
12.  On 17 December 2003 the applicant again wrote to the Prefect, applying to have his land removed from the Louin ACCA’s hunting grounds. He stated as follows:
“... My application to have the land removed is not based on personal convictions but on the fact that the European Court of Human Rights, and subsequently the national administrative courts, have ruled ... that ‘while different treatment of persons in a comparable situation may be justified by the general interest resulting in particular from the need to ensure coherent and efficient management of game stocks, there does not appear to be any objective and reasonable justification for obliging landowners, by means of compulsory transfer, to join an approved municipal hunters’ association against their wishes.’ It is clear from these different court rulings that large and small landowners cannot be treated differently on the basis of provisions which are contrary to Article 1 of Protocol [No. 1] taken in conjunction with Article 14 of [the] Convention.
As I own only 10 hectares, 12 ares and 74 centiares, I would kindly request you to grant me permission, by means of a reasoned administrative decision, to immediately remove from the hunting grounds of the Louin ACCA the plots of land entered in section ... of the land register...”
13.  On 6 February 2004 the Director of Agriculture and Forestry of the Deux-Sèvres Prefecture informed the applicant that his application had been rejected. Noting that the applicant was no longer citing his original reasons relating to personal convictions, but instead relied on Article 14 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, the Director wrote as follows:
“... the provisions of the Law of 26 July 2000 and of the Environmental Code, and in particular Articles L. 422-10 and L. 422-13 thereof, were designed to bring the domestic law into line with the case-law of the Court ... by providing that only landowners who do not hunt and who are opposed to hunting as a matter of personal conviction have a right to raise objections to hunting irrespective of the surface area of their land, while maintaining the requirement for owners of land below a certain threshold (twenty hectares in Deux-Sèvres) to transfer the hunting rights over their land to the ACCA.
Our enquiries have revealed that you are the holder of a valid hunting permit for the current hunting season.
As a result ..., pursuant to Article L. 422-13 of the Environmental Code, I must inform you that I am unable to grant your request and that the land you seek to have removed shall remain within the hunting grounds of the Louin ACCA. ...”
14.  On 23 March 2004 the applicant requested the Prefect of Deux‑Sèvres to reconsider the decision.
On 6 April 2004, having received no reply, he applied to the Poitiers Administrative Court for judicial review of the implicit refusal constituted by the Prefect’s failure to reply, and of the decision of 6 February 2004.
15.  On 23 March 2005 the Poitiers Administrative Court allowed the application, in a judgment containing the following reasoning:
“...while different treatment of persons in a comparable situation may be justified by the general interest resulting in particular from the need to ensure coherent and efficient management of game stocks, there does not appear to be any objective and reasonable justification for obliging landowners, by means of compulsory transfer, to join an approved municipal hunters’ association against their wishes. ... thus, the difference in treatment between large and small landowners is contrary to Article 1 of Protocol [No. 1] read in conjunction with Article 14 of [the] Convention. ...”
16.  The Louin ACCA applied to the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal to have that judgment set aside, arguing that, as a hunter himself, the applicant could not claim to be a victim of a Convention violation.
The Administrative Court of Appeal rejected the application in a judgment of 18 July 2006. It considered that the Director of Agriculture and Forestry had not been competent to sign the decision of 6 February 2004, which was therefore unlawful, as was the implicit refusal. Accordingly, the court concluded that the Louin ACCA had no grounds for contesting the setting‑aside of the decisions in question.
17.  On an application by the Louin ACCA, the Conseil d’Etat, in a judgment of 16 June 2008, quashed the judgment of the Bordeaux Administrative Court of Appeal. It held that the latter had committed an error of law in ruling that the Director of Agriculture and Forestry had not been competent to sign the decision in question, since he had been properly delegated to sign documents in the sphere concerned.
Ruling on the merits, the Conseil d’Etat went on to quash the judgment of the Poitiers Administrative Court of 23 March 2005 and rejected the applicant’s application for judicial review. The Conseil d’Etat held, inter alia, as follows:
“... The evidence in the file shows that Mr Chabauty, who owns land with a surface area below that specified in paragraph 3 of Article L. 422-10 of the Environmental Code, requested the removal of his land not on the grounds that he was opposed to hunting as a matter of personal conviction, as permitted by the fifth paragraph of that Article, but on the grounds that he wished to reserve the hunting rights over his land for his own use without allowing the members of the ACCA to benefit from them.
The system of approved hunters’ associations was devised on general-interest grounds to prevent the unregulated exercise of hunting and promote rational use of game stocks. Landowners who hunt and who transfer the rights over their land are automatically entitled, in accordance with Article L. 422-21 of the Environmental Code, to membership of the hunters’ association and, accordingly, to hunt throughout the association’s hunting grounds. Thus, the owners of land with a surface area below that specified in the third paragraph of Article L. 422-10 of the Code have a choice between relinquishing their hunting rights on the grounds that they are opposed to hunting as a matter of personal conviction or transferring the hunting rights over their land to the ACCA in exchange for the compensatory benefits referred to above. Accordingly, the system does not constitute disproportionate interference with the right to property and is not in breach of Article 1 of [Protocol No. 1].
The difference in treatment under the law between small and large landowners was introduced in the interests of hunters who own small plots of land, who can thus band together in order to obtain larger hunting grounds. Thus, this difference in treatment is based on objective and reasonable grounds and, since the owners of small plots remain free to use their land for a purpose in keeping with their conscience, the system in issue is not in breach of Article 1 of [Protocol No. 1] taken in conjunction with Article 14 of [the] Convention. It follows from the above that the Administrative Court incorrectly based its ruling on a breach of [these provisions] in setting aside the impugned decisions...”